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Sunday, 1 March 2015

March-ing Ponies

The first of March! Its beginning to get lighter early in a morning and stay lighter well past 5pm, so glad that Spring is on its way.

We were up early this morning as Cordelia has to be at the stables early, she was helping out and very excited. She is desperate for her own horse one day but before that she really needs to have experience in caring for horses and all their needs.

She said her jobs for the day were mucking out 5 stables, cleaning and changing water bowls, tacking up the horses for the children in lessons, bringing horses in out of the fields and taking some out to the fields. She also got to have an hours lesson in exchange for all her hard work.

Since before Cordelia was even one year old she loved horses, one of her first words was "Popo" (a nickname for horses, in case you were wondering) she had a rocking horse, toy horses, cuddly horses etc. She had her first riding experience on her 4th birthday, where she got to groom the horse and have a trot around an indoor arena, she didn't stop smiling the whole day. This is a photo of her:

She had lessons on and off, mainly because they are expensive and also because I didn't find the right kind of riding school that fitted her well. She started regular lessons two years ago and also goes along to weekly Pony Club where she has acquired several Pony badges for horse safety and care.

She came home last night shattered, achy, covered in mud (she fell over in a field of mud) and smelling pretty darn gross but she loved every minute of it and was super happy. Look at the mud:

Meanwhile hubby and I took Piper and Ruben into town, Piper needed some things to finish off an outfit. No yugioh group for Ruben today as he isn't feel 100%. He is having a lot of hormone-induced meltdowns at the moment, which has been very hard. Its a sure sign my youngest boy is growing up and is hard on all of us. When you are such close family, like we are, when one of you is not right it affects all of us. I have some ideas of things we are going to try this week, including less online time and more actual play, tomorrow we are going to move him back into his old, smaller bedroom and move Cordelia back into the bigger room. Hopefully this will allow her more space for her art (and Black Veil Bride posters!) and Ruben will feel better being closer to our room.